Giving consumers hardware to lower their energy consumption alone is often not sufficient to produce the hardware's full energy savings potential. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated that consumers could save approximately 20% on heating and cooling costs per year by properly programming their thermostats. However, a recent investigation revealed that most people with programmable thermostats never program them and that a third of respondents put their thermostats in a long-term hold. As a result, capable hardware (e.g., programmable thermostats) alone fails to deliver possible energy savings potential.
The above-described deficiencies of today's energy management systems are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with the state of the art and corresponding aspects of some of the various non-limiting embodiments may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.